Stop the Third Party Insanity

Townhall.com ^ | January 28, 2021 | Kurt Schlichter

[Kaslin]

Ditching the GOP is a bad idea born of justifiable frustration, and we need to stop being emotional and start being ruthless in our campaign to retake this country from these liberal establishment aspiring fascists. A third party is not the way. It is a bad idea, one that is technically impractical and which is strategically inept. It will lead to disaster. And the Democrats know it, which is why they love this third party palaver. The only thing that makes the tooting likes of Eric Swalwell coo in delight harder than some mediocre Chi Com honeypot is the thought of us conservatives committing ritual suicide by splitting our half of the country in two because some of the 50 percent of Americans in our camp are insufferable sissies.

News flash, folks. We’re going to have to suffer the sissies forever. The question is whether they run the party apparatus, or whether they are consigned to the fringes, scribbling in their blogs about how True Conservatism™ requires that we go to war everywhere, that we allow giant corporations to limit our speech, and that we all wear vinyl gimp suits with ball gags and address Nancy Pelosi as “Mistress P.”

Just kidding.

The part about “we” going to war is a joke. You and your kids get to go to war while they, with very few exceptions, who never shut up about it, get to stay home and fight their endless war against push-ups and testosterone. The rest is pretty dead-on.

Let’s look at the big picture. The design of the Constitution essentially mandates a two-party system. A third party has never won the presidency, and one rarely wins legislative seats. Usually, such candidates call themselves “independents,” but Democrats know they are really Democrats and understand this is just a ploy to appeal to the suckers.

There is always going to be a party of the left, and a party of the right, with the battle over the middle. A party getting 55 percent of the vote is considered to have won in a landslide. America is that closely divided. For our sins, the party of the right is the Republican Party. And math says we are stuck with it.

You cannot divide the 50 percent of America on the right up and hope to beat the 50 percent on the left. It does not work, and all the hopes, dreams, and krakens of a million outraged conservatives on Twitter will not make it so. Politics must be about addition, and that implies we need to add people who are not as conservative as we are. If you want purity, date a nun. This is politics, and if you don’t win, you lose.

I propose we win.

Third parties do have a track record of disrupting elections. The Left blamed the Greens for Bush in 2000, and some blame the Libertarians, among other factors, for President * in 2020. Clinton won in 1992 because Perot split the vote for George H.W. Bush. But these events all have one thing in common – the third party never wins. Nor will one.

Trump himself seems to understand, walking back the “Patriot Party” stuff in order to settle in as a GOP kingmaker. He knows he loses in 2024 running as a third party candidate – 50 percent of people already hate him and some percentage of the GOP will stay GOP out of habit if nothing else. You can’t expect to win if you start off, best case, losing 50 percent + 1. But by remaining in the GOP – as its most popular figure by far – he has real power to influence events.

The third party talk also ignores the practical reality of the GOP’s irreplaceable infrastructure. A competitive national political party is a Broadway play, not a show some kids put on in a barn. While some imagine a sort of spontaneous, math-defying movement materializing out of the political ether, the reality is that a party structure performs essential tasks and there is no substitute for it. Who has the donor lists, the volunteer lists, the organization to drive get out the vote efforts? The party. You can’t patch one together overnight out of fervor and contempt for the squishes.

There are many things that are critical that go into a campaign and go on behind the scenes that most of us never even imagined. For example, who are the lawyers who worked for the GOP who know election law who will be leaving their GOP contracts to come and keep the “MAGA Party” candidates out of jail? You think the Establishment will give the “Constitutionalist Party” a pass for not understanding the campaign finance laws? And who pays these lawyers, assuming any really good ones want to flush their career in electoral law down the toilet to go all-in on a losing one-shot cause?

That’s just one example of many of the things a party infrastructure does, and no one is going to build another national structure (not to mention a structure in each of the 50 states) in the next four years. It is appealing to leave the jerks in the GOP behind, but if you do, you are choosing irrelevance.

But hey, you’re angry so you gotta cater to those feelz.

That’s stupid and weak. Tighten up. Yeah, the GOP establishment sucks – and no, you’re not the only one who has noticed. We are always going to have people near the center who frustrate us. That’s the reality, and being angry about it is like yelling at clouds. But what we can do – and have done – is slowly force the party to conform more closely to our vision. It’s like turning the Titanic, an apt metaphor if there ever was one, but it is happening already.

Look at the GOP just five years ago and look at it today. Yeah, we have the rump Renfield contingent with tiresome goofs like Mitt (R?-Miracle Whip). We have others who alternate between establishment-curious moderate wimpiness and coming through for us at many key junctures – Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. But look at what we don’t have – Jeff Flake is gone. Jeb! is a flabby footnote. And as hard as Nikki! is trying to make herself happen, she’s not happening. The GOP has shifted our way – on wars, on culture, on tech, on playing to win. We have earned the support of Americans of all races in unprecedented numbers because we have focused on people who – remember this? – work hard and play by the rules. That’s progress. Not enough, not nearly, but to deny the progress because you are angry only empowers the people you are angry at. We can’t throw out what we have already achieved simply because we have much more work to do. Take the W, people.

We need to do more. We need to infiltrate the infrastructure and remake the Republican Party from the inside into a party for working Americans of every demographic who love their country and demand their rights, as opposed to the 2015 party that shafted working Americans so Democrat-donor big corporations can rig the system and let SJW twerps endlessly hassle us for the crime of being normal.

But Kurt, we do vote and sometimes we lose!

Yes. You will lose much of the time. This is called reality. People who compete often lose. The ones who don’t compete never lose, but they never win either.

Here’s your action plan. If you are a registered Republican, stay that way. If not, register Republican. Then vote in the primaries to rid ourselves of squishes. Then take the next step. Find your local GOP organization and join, then run for local party and then government offices. We need to build our farm team, and that means traveling along the American cursus honorum from GOP precinct captain to county GOP committee member to city council to state assembly to Congress and beyond.

Gee Kurt, that sounds like hard work.

It is. It’s a lot easier to declare you are never ever voting GOP again on Twitter. But I was under the impression that we are the faction that is not averse to hard work, especially when it is our country at stake. So, this is a test – if you’re serious about winning, you stay GOP.

A third party hands total control over to the left, and if you want to see what that scenario looks like, check out my newest novel Crisis, as well as my other four novels of America splitting into red and blue nations, People's Republic, Indian Country, Wildfire, and Collapse!

[Wuli]

“OK. Without a third party, then, for me, and millions like me, there will be no party. I am through with the republicans. And as far as voting: this seems to be a waste of time.”

You want what you think is the easier political life, while the rest of us are willing to do what GOP pro-lifers and GOP Liberatarians have been willing to work hard and fight for for decades - winning inside the GOP.

The GOPe and their RINOs have mostly been the losers in most recent past GOP races. While you want to slink away to a failed third party, the rest of us will stand and continue to fight for the heart and soul of the GOP. It’s a slog, not a sprint. Results come in increments.

[Does so]

See post #158...

[Wuli]

You offered the most self-defeating line of thought on the matter.

[Wuli]

Who is the “they” you speak of?

You lump all good GOPers in with the bad, ignoring who acted, who did or not have a position to act from, and many other factors. In effect you might as well be saying all the 70+ million voters who voted for Trump, minus yourself, let Trump down.

Your position has never built any party. It always throws the baby out with the bathwater.

[Does so]

See post #158...

[CarolinaReaganFan]

third party might not work well, but on the other hand we rarely win whenever trying to primary a RINO, so we need to do something differently.

[RC one]

The way I see it, if I get stuck paying $25,000 in taxes (or more) for the privilege of keeping my firearms and magazines, I have already been defeated, by my own country no less. So, if it comes to that, I’m just not playing for team America anymore and I think you’ll see a lot of people coming around to a similar conclusion if we end up going down this road.

[Wuli]

“by the GOP”

A lie.

You take the actions of some and blame all, as if all others than those with the power to act agreed with the results YOU claim was EVERYONE in office in the GOP’s fault.

You ignore all the GOP office holders who actually agree with you. So you would just abandon them instead of joining and working harder with, and strengthing them. No you would leave and make them weaker.

[Does so]

Try a new name that resonates:

See post #157...

[Alberta's Child]

I'm a big fan of a third party, though not necessarily running candidates to compete against Democrats and Republicans. My preference would be for the third party to function the way some minor parties do: by endorsing candidates from the two major parties.

I don't ignore all the GOP office holders who agree with me. I vote for them -- including many who don't agree with me all the time.

I don't donate money to the GOP, however -- under any circumstances. I'm not a Republican, and have never been affiliated with a political party. I'm a conservative nationalist.

[Does so]

Needs a NEW name:

See post #157...

[wardaddy]

Sorry Kurt

If Trump doesn’t take over GOPe

I’m going with him and his son and so forth

[RC one]

How many semi-automatic firearms and magazines that hold over 10 rounds do you own? Are you going to pay the $200 to own each of them? Are you going to turn them into the government so they can melt them down? Or are you going to just allow your government to turn you into a felon with the stroke of a pen?

That's what it's coming to.

And if it comes to that, do you really think I care if the Chinese and Mexicans walk in here and take over? I'll have a nice stiff drink and LOL on my way to hell with the rest of you.

[wardaddy]

This one is slightly bigger

Weird how that happens

Timing

[wardaddy]

Good post

I’m not going back to having war with GOPe 95% of the times

Aside from judges ....what’s the point

So we vote federally only for sake of judges

[wardaddy]

I heard his son on Rush fill in yesterday

I’m not sure....I think Trump would like to squash the GOPe and bring in the ones who he sees as loyal

The GOPe did almost nothing to support their landslide elected candidate

I knew on 11-4 that Mitch was not on board and wanted Trump gone

Saying to clean out GOPe and primary everyone and create new Trump led GOPe is as tall an order as creating a new Google and Facebook and Twitter and Apple etc

Trump Jr talked about this

These are monopolies in practice

They said for us to leave and start our own platforms

Which we have

So what did they do

They killed those platforms best of their ability

Nope

Platitudes aren’t working anymore

I’m third party prone

If Trump takes his 75-80 million with him he’s got a new party pronto at least nationally

[Alberta's Child]

You can probably forget about the judges, too.

I would make the case that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County -- which extended civil rights protection to homosexual and "transgender" people (whatever the hell they are) -- played a much bigger role in Trump's loss last November than most people realize.

The decision itself was bad enough, but having the majority opinion written by Neil Gorsuch exposed the whole "originalist judge" label to be an absolute fraud. When a Trump nominee can fabricate sh!t as law as well as any zany leftist, you have no reason to hold out Federal court nominations as an important issue in a presidential election anymore.

[Cuttnhorse]

This piece might have been credible in 2009, but not anymore.

That's so correct...these, "a third party can't work...look what happened when Ross Perot ran" yappers don't seem to understand that president Trump received more votes than any incumbent in history.
Comparing Perot's 1992 Independent party campaign with Donald Trump is a fools errand...different time, different people and the three irrefutable examples of GOP sellout you post are reasons for another third party shot.

Plus, I don't recall ever the disgust that so many Republicans have with the establishment GOP.

[Cuttnhorse]

This piece might have been credible in 2009, but not anymore.

That's so correct...these, "a third party can't work...look what happened when Ross Perot ran" yappers don't seem to understand that president Trump received more votes than any incumbent in history.
Comparing Perot's 1992 Independent party campaign with Donald Trump is a fools errand...different time, different people and the three irrefutable examples of GOP sellout you post are reasons for another third party shot.

Plus, I don't recall ever the disgust that so many Republicans have with the establishment GOP.

[wardaddy]

Plus judges were obviously intimidated by the mob